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Discovered! 505
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Small Business
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Two New Yorkers learned to use their imagination so fertilely that they set up the New Idea Factory. Their stock in trade was to think up new gadgets, new uses for products already on the market, and new machines. They dreamed up as many as five new uses for coffee. They have shown architects and contractors how to design complete houses with separate entrances, and yet incorporate the houses into apartment houses. When you buy a lapel watch and find a pedometer in it, you can thank these gentlemen for the bright thought. They call such jewelry pieces "operational jewelry," and they keep their agents busy selling their ideas to manufacturers.

You probably won't be producing ideas as fast as the owners of the New Idea Factory, but you are certain to have many that will be just as good. But what can you do with them once you have them? First, you may patent your idea. It has been said that the patent office stays open only in order to keep patent lawyers eating. True it is that small changes often make a patent void. The man who patented the Protecto Shield (see idea 139) has seen his own idea used by competitors in a slightly different form, but his shield is superior, and had he not patented it, his royalties would have been less.

Before you even consider patenting your idea, first date and put in writing every detail of your brainchild. Have this paper signed by yourself and two people not in your own family as dated proof that, on or before a certain time, this idea was conceived by you. Be sure to include in this paper all details and drawings.

Next, go to your library and ask for information on patents. Ask for "Rules of Practice of the United States Patent Office." Or you may send to Washington for it. Although you will hire a patent lawyer, read up on other inventions and patents just to get the "feel" of what is before you. Half the fun of carrying out any project (the other half is making the money) is understanding each step as you go along. Ask for some books on inventions not yet in existence, but needed. Many libraries have records of patents already in force, and you can check through these if you wish. You may find that your own invention is already patented and you will be saved the expense of a lawyer.

The United States Patent Office will not advise you as to which lawyer in your locality you should consult. Ask your banker, Board of Trade, or other lawyers for names of reputable patent lawyers. Listen to the one you choose. If he says your idea is practical and can be patented, he will make a search. If the search shows your invention is not already patented, have him file a claim covering just as much detail as possible.

Don't patent an idea that is worthless. Many men and women have spent hours of their lives on inventions that have no value. You may discover a way to make automobiles run only in reverse; you could patent the process, but the idea would still be of no value. Before you spend any money with a patent lawyer, check to see if there really is a need for your product. Unless you are certain that you can sell it outright or on a royalty basis to a manufacturer, or that your idea is one with which you can go into profitable production on your own, patenting it will be time and effort wasted.

After your application for your patent has been made, you do not have to wait until it is granted before you can use or sell it. But don't talk about it to anyone until your lawyer has filed the necessary papers.

Once your claim is filed, you may find that the manufacturers you had planned on are not as eager to buy your idea as you had thought. Chances are these are the larger firms who wish to utilize their own inventors, and your best bet would be the hundreds of smaller companies who cannot afford researchers. If your idea is good, it will be bought either on a royalty basis or outright.

Once you have patented your product, you need not necessarily market it yourself for the United States Patent Office has a Register, which lists patents that are offered to manufacturers either by outright sale or by licensing. All you have to do is send ten cents, a copy of your patent, and the patent number. The Register then lists your patent as being available either for sale or license, and gives your address. From then on you carry on all correspondence yourself.

If you do not wish to patent your idea, you may sell it to a reputable manufacturer. In some cases when you write to a company and ask what assurance they will give you that your idea will not be stolen, they will reply that you will have to trust them. Sometimes your idea is only half an idea; it is still too nebulous to put on paper, and only by talking with the manufacturer who will add his practical ideas to yours, will you really have a salable idea (see idea 138).

In the case of the mother who thought up selling penny candies (see idea 137) in boxes, she has probably registered her trade-mark, but not patented the idea for the candies.

Although I have been discussing your patent in terms of ideas, it will never be an idea that you will patent. You can neither patent nor copyright an idea. You must first put it into concrete form, for just the idea itself is worthless as far as the Patent Office is concerned.

Although you cannot patent an idea, you may be able to sell it. Your mind may have executed, right down to the last detail, a unique mail-order program for a large bookstore. Put this idea in writing and have it signed by two witnesses and yourself. Then go to the head of the bookstore, present your idea, and if he is receptive, have him put in writing that you will be given a certain share of the profits brought in by your promotional stunt.

When you write a letter to a manufacturer suggesting he buy your patent or your idea, be sure that you go into great detail. Many ideas are never used because they are inadequately presented. Actually, you are writing a job application for an idea, and you should be as thorough as though you were applying for a job yourself. Don't take the manufacturer's imagination for granted. Point out all your product's uses, how it will increase sales or cut down on his production costs, or help him sell the products he already has. If you have not patented your product when you write this letter to manufacturers, write the same one to yourself and send it to yourself by registered mail. Do not open it; keep it—it may be some protection to you at a later date.

Even though you have the million-dollar idea, you may not be able to sell it at once. The man who saw the possibilities in the use of a plastic pack in which margarine could be colored waited six years to find a manufacturer who would market his patented idea. But since his royalties amounted to a million dollars a year, the waiting paid off.

Before you are four ways in which ideas were carried out. The first and last were put into production by the persons who thought of them; the second was sold to a manufacturer without first being patented, and the third was sold after a patent had been granted.

A young mother of two children recently saw this humorous homily on the desk of a business acquaintance, and from it started her own enterprise, the sale of memory-evoking candy items.

Mrs. Elizabeth Nelson, who now distributes "Joys of Childhood" penny candies from her quaint center-chimneyed colonial home in Lynn, Massachusetts, needed money desperately.

Her problem was to "find the lemon," and one afternoon at home with her children, five and three, the discovery was made when she placed pennies in their eager palms for a trip to the corner store to buy candy.

She recalled her own childhood when licorice sticks, Mary Janes, Boston Baked Beans, fried egg in a pan, and the like, could be bought in the country store of the small town where she summered with her parents.

She thought, "How nice if I could gather all of these old-time candies in one box for others to enjoy."

The store in her neighborhood, however, had disappointingly few of the early favorites. But as her interest grew she wrote candy manufacturers all over the country and soon they were sending her boxes of "old-fashion" chocolate creams, bull's-eyes, root beer barrels, horehound drops, sour balls, bits of rock candy, and even those printed candy hearts with which schoolday courtships were carried on—"U R My Queen," "I Love U 2," and similar sentiments.

Needing a package in which to merchandise the assortments that she made up from various manufacturers, she went to an advertising agency. But their ideas were too cute, or too coy, or too expensive. While trying to tell a young advertising man as gently as possible that she was unable to use his copy ideas she idly picked up several squares of paper from the floor, scrawled with crayon drawings of her five-year-old son.

"This is the kind of drawings I need," said the mother; "something simple and unaffected that any child could do himself and might also understand if he saw them on a box of candy." There was a black cat with two red eyes and a wavering tail enclosed in an orange frame; an omeletlike burst of sun in a blue frame; a yellow duck with red legs and a red bill; a man with green legs and a boy with red legs; and a purple house with four eccentric windows and a green roof.

"Personally," said the advertising man, "I think you have something there." And these are the sort of drawings found on the box containing the many penny candies. Once when the agency was trying to prepare an advertisement for insertion in The Christian Science Monitor, and she found the copy lacking in freshness, Mrs. Nelson asked her son to draw a picture of a boy eating a lollipop and this natural, child scrawl was used to advertise the boxes of penny candies.

Mrs. Nelson plans someday, in addition to selling the boxes by mail, to start a small penny shop in her home like that of Hepzibah Pyncheon, in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, in order to test her candies on the small fry of the neighborhood.

This is the way it happened. Several years ago, when she was a buyer in a Fifth Avenue ready-to-wear shop, her work carried her around the country a good deal. In her travels she noticed the beautifully fitted overnight cases so many women carried. Like her own bag, they had bottles and jars for cold cream, cleansing cream, face cream, hand cream, night cream, and day cream. In fact, it seemed to her there were containers for everything except whipped cream and ice cream.

There were even places for toothbrushes, hairbrushes, clothes brushes, and shoe brushes. Everything a woman needs—everything, that is, except bobby pins. These, Mrs. Wallace observed, women carried in battered old razor boxes filched from their husbands, in honey jars, paper envelopes, and other unlikely containers that looked sorry beside the sleek cold-cream containers.

It was then that she realized she had discovered a genuine need—a bobby-pin box. After that Mrs. Wallace began asking her friends where they kept their bobby pins. Without exception, they gave her a sheepish grin and said, "I keep mine in a match box," or in a "typewriter ribbon box," or in an "elastic band."

Mrs. Wallace thought a box for bobby pins was such an obvious necessity that if she didn't make one someone else surely would. But nobody did. Many women put original articles on the market by making them in their own homes and finding commercial outlets for them. Alice Wallace thought of this, but she wondered, "How shall I design it? What materials shall I use? How can I market it?" Because she didn't have the answers she kept on asking herself these questions for three years—while she used her husband's razor box for her bobbies.

Then one bright day she realized that she didn't have to make the boxes herself, that there were persons already in business making similar things who knew merchandise, costs, prices, and production technique. She knew that manufacturers were always looking for new, original suggestions.

She saw that her job was to bring to the manufacturer the knowledge of the market for a bobby-pin box, let him work out the details, and thus share in the profits. (Wise Alice!)

By this time, Mrs. Wallace had left the world of trade and had a home to care for. She felt out of touch, but she began to make inquiries of a former business associate and obtained the name of a manufacturer of good reputation. Alice took her idea to him; he seemed interested but not impressed. He gave her no promises, merely said he would think about it, work with it. If it could be used, he said, she would have a just share of the profits. Then began a period of waiting.

One year later (I hope you won't find the manufacturer for your idea quite so procrastinating) she was called back to the office and the manufacturer was enthusiastic. He had used her idea to develop a purse item that looked like a lipstick case. When a button on the side was pushed up, the top opened and out popped a dozen bobby pins.

The containers were black enamel with blue cloisonne flowers, or white enamel with red hearts and flowers. "Mrs. Wallace, would you, prefer a final payment or do you prefer a royalty contract?" the manufacturer asked. The latter was decided upon and a contract satisfactory to both parties was drawn up.

The first bobby-pin boxes reached the market shortly before Christmas. They were an immediate success and in a few months they were being sold in better shops from coast to coast. Today they are sold in Canada, South America, India, Portugal, and South Africa. New designs have been added. There are black ones trimmed with dainty petit point and "dinner models" of gold plate and rhinestones.

"It has been a wonderful satisfaction to me," Mrs. Wallace says, "to see this idea put to practical use."

In discussing this experience with friends, she has found that fear that an idea will be stolen and a desire for all the profits keep many an idea in the closet. Again and again she hears it said, "I have had an idea for years myself, but I have been afraid the idea would be stolen if I tried to market it."

What good is any idea if nothing is ever done with it? Take your ideas out of the closet, put them in the hands of a trustworthy firm, as the bobby-pin box creator did, and let them make money for you.

Although it has proved to be a most practical article, both for its utilitarian value and in point of sales, the inventor had no easy time of it. He was able to patent his brain child, but when he tried to find a manufacturer for his product it was no simple matter. None was so enthusiastic about his product as he, but finally the Gifts Molding Corporation, of Chicago, agreed to produce some samples for him.

The next step was just as difficult. Although an invalid, the inventor never for a moment lost faith in his idea. He took it upon himself to sell the article, which no one seemed to think would ever amount to much. He finally convinced a Chicago department store that it would be profitable to allow him to have a small space in which to show off the shields. Shoppers stopped to look at this simple gadget—stopped and bought, and they have been buying ever since. Now the inventor is drawing royalties of thousands a year.